Houthis Monopolizing ‘Salvation Govt’: Yemen’s Saleh

Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Friday criticized the Houthi rebels — with whom he has had an alliance since 2014 — for “excluding” members of his General People’s Congress (GPC) party from a Houthi-led government.

Speaking to party cadres on Friday, Saleh said that GPC members had been largely sidelined from the “national salvation government” unveiled by the Houthis last month in capital Sanaa.

Since 2014, when they overran Sanaa, the Houthis and forces loyal to Saleh’s GPC have maintained an alliance with a view to overthrowing the Saudi-backed government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Recently, however, cracks have begun to appear between the Houthi leadership and pro-Saleh forces.

In March of last year, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive air campaign aimed at recapturing Sanaa and restoring Hadi’s embattled government.

Two earlier rounds of UN-sponsored peace talks failed to resolve the conflict, in which thousands of Yemenis have reportedly been killed and an estimated 2.5 million forced to flee their homes.